


Perdition is Opprobrium

by 13letters



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Angst, Conviction - Freeform, Discussion of What Is Good and What Is Right, F/M, Intellectual Pretentiousness, Jealousy, Lengthy Conversations, Post TFA, Rebellion, Romance, Slow Build, Slow Burn, Tea, The Coat - Freeform, War, contradiction, lots of parallels
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-02-17
Updated: 2017-08-04
Packaged: 2018-05-21 06:52:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 16,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6042181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/13letters/pseuds/13letters
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>His eyes catch, like he's just now noticing what he's been pretending to not see what he's been indirectly staring at for weeks. "You still have it."</p><p>And it's self-conscious, the way she raises her fingers to the collar of her coat, the one that's insignias are emblazoned his. "I'm sorry," she says, because it isn't like it's security for her, but he starts to shake his head when she begins to shrug her arms out of the sleeves.</p><p>"I have others."</p><p>And it does take a moment, but it's a lame statement that's also tactic permission and a kindness when he spares a quick look at her. He's more subtle a diplomat than Ren gives him credit for, she realizes, as she brushes her thumb over a general's pin on the coat's sleeve.</p><p>But they don't speak much the three hours she sits with him as he works. She mistakenly calls him Brendol because she'd heard the name, and it was another few minutes until <em>yes, my name is Rey </em>as if he didn't know, but it's the simplest, easiest time she's had on this ship since he told her to take a step and shrouded her in the First Order's colors of his coat. </p><p>It's really not much of anything. For him neither.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eradication

It happened by accident. 

He hasn't yet seen much of the girl since her rebel base was detected. Since the skies were an angry red on the small planet, since he stood over the small lake and saw all the fish floating lifelessly on the surface. Ships were falling out of the heavens like stars, and _almost_.

FN-2187 was the first casualty. He doesn't know if the failed specimen felt any pain -- there was a look of peace on his face in that standard infirmary bed, the location only found because past Ben Solo remembered the layout of these structures Kylo Ren couldn't know. 

Terrified faces. The girl. Their _Black Leader's_ triumph when he took a blaster and fired without aiming, the victory that felt somewhat like agony, a shorn apology, more blood on pale hands and their fearless General weeping like a faithful mother. 

Calculated and set, he saw to it that their mission was completed before at least Ren would have to take her life. It wouldn't be recompense. The first words Ren spoke when he was awake and out of a bacta tank, the cut angry and red and severe across his face, were something about _dad_.

There were things even the Supreme Leader didn't know. 

He doesn't ask himself why. 

The face of the girl was soft, even in her rage. Anger, malice, a pretense of revenge. 

Blood barely staining the black entrenching Ren, leaking onto the hard boards of the floor, he said it through his mask, impersonal and metallic. "Come." Low like he could have been addressing a lover, a threat. 

There aren't many choices in war. 

He made it for her. Red patches on the shoulders, insignia blazing bright and prestigious, he offered his black overcoat to the girl stiffly, gone from his shoulders to hers in an instant. 

She was barely dressed, and imagine the pathetic laugh this would be a decade from now, all of their destinies made fallible by a girl that couldn't recover from hypothermia. How irony burned bright in bloodlines. 

"Take a step," he told the girl, a young woman when her face flashed to his in defiance, when she flinched at his gloves barely touching her forearm and indicating her forwards. Practicality. 

Choices were easier when they were made for you. He hasn't spoken to Rey since.

It's been two revolutions since he'd seen her last, now, a little more than thirty standard days and all the hassle of repairs. But he hasn't seen her -- has barely seen Ren. He doesn't complain. He strides with purpose and importance and stands where his father once stood, a legacy in the Empire that perhaps has a heavier mantle than Darth Vader's helmet. 

_Sure_ , he thinks sardonically, just a little self-deprecating. Everyone here is where they're supposed to be, and he patiently waits for an operator to pass him, her hand on her swollen, pregnant belly, her smile inevitable. So is his for an instant, infectious, and that's when the girl turns to notice him, and he's not any longer thinking on the bitterness of the incredulous tea he and Ren would drink while weeping about the pressure of both their families and the marks it's left on both of them. 

Ridiculous. 

That's why it's surely an accident, her standing where he's meant to as the General here, _the_ figure of charge that's held up as commendable and respectable and rather indestructive. Never once has he taken rage to a control panel. But never once has he been remotely tempted to. 

"General Hux," she says as way of greeting, the slight nod of her head in recognition not quite the proper salute, but she's already turning back to the wide windows, the edge of the landing that's his to oversee, his place to stand and survey and see all those star systems twinkling out there. 

How grand they must be, those places faraway, how small they all are here, and how magnificent. 

He doesn't ask Rey if she requires something. She's outfitted in a dark overcoat, a general's insignia decorating it. He's not sure how he's forgotten. 

It's impossible to fault her now, when she's looking like that. Her face, the window, the galaxy, standing in the middle of it and something they'll one day say is so much greater. 

She looks like he felt the first time, a bit of a romantic boy in a starship and all the galaxy in one hand, the nature of probability in the other. 

He doesn't ask her how she feels, what she sees. It isn't something unspoken, something kindred. 

There's nothing too surprised in her eyes when he clears his throat softly, glances left for the first name and face he can put together. 

"Marks." The man up and solutes instantly, and Hux looks to Rey for a moment he shouldn't have. "She must be lost. Take her wherever she asks to be."


	2. Anguish

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Rey. There's so much more."
> 
> "To what?"
> 
> "Our lives," he answers. He raises his chin. Squares his impossibly broad shoulders. "The Force."

She thinks of her life with the Resistance and how everything was so _loud_.

It wasn't the empty, silent loudness of a sandstorm, grains caught in her hair, up her nostrils, under her eyelids. It was deafeningly quiet and grating and metallic and urgency falling into the steps of the few she would see in the halls. 

There was a purpose here, a precedent of a cause that seems to have become the lifestyle it wasn't to the Resistance. There they were fighting for the freedom to live, not to be taken over in just one more way. Not like here. 

She tries not to dwell on how she can't feel her friends' presences from this far away. It must be the distance, she convinces herself, because like flickers of light, moths to a flame, she knows Master Luke is out there somewhere. His twin, too. 

She tries not to dwell on how Ren assures her that they'd only have abandoned her anyways, that Luke didn't want to return, that only cowards would act as he did when an entire galaxy was taking up arms and he was just a lost boy torn in the middle of opposing sides and a chancellor in the Senate's influence. 

He had scowled in something crueler than mockery when he'd goaded her next that Luke hadn't even told her that he was her father. 

Her voice was weaker than it should have been when she reminded him that he didn't need to, that she already knew the moment she'd seen him, but maybe he'd already forgotten how it felt with Han. She didn't want to consider he might be right, that Luke hadn't told her and made no inclination of doing so -- but that's a moment of doubt and a shot of hurt trying to fill the void that aches in her chest. _The Resistance won't be intimidated by you._

There are only so many secrets to be kept on an island, and how is a lone ship lost somewhere in the galaxy any different?

"We're family," Ren reminded her.

More than she felt the fear of standing next to him, she felt the stubbornness she recognized in Leia and how the vile Kylo Ren was standing unmasked and pretending he hadn't gone too far. Fell too hard. 

"I suppose that makes you entitled," she says simply, schooling her face blank. To forgiveness and an infinite second chance, but it's like he's playing at a war he doesn't understand. 

She can't help it now, she sees his face through her child self's eyes, and he's _Ben_ , and his eyes are so brown, and his laugh is _so_ loud, and she was just a little girl, but she could tell then that Benny was powerful and going to be wonderful someday. Strong and good and gallant, cheerful and smarmy and stubborn, but a true Jedi. 

If the teenage boy that had been helping her up each time she fell off her makeshift speeder could be more than the long-legged goof (like his father) like a Jedi Knight, then it still felt like impending fate. It already meant something. 

Now she's not so sure. 

"I won't fail you like they might," he tells her. Might, not will. He says it clipped, and where she once saw greatness, she sees the weight of all the universe too heavy on his shoulders. "Rey. There's so much more."

"To what?"

"Our lives," he answers. He raises his chin. Squares his impossibly broad shoulders. "The Force."

She doesn't say anything before she turns on her heel. He doesn't try to stop her. 

It's been near a month since he'd quit having her confined and guarded; he knew her too well, knew she wouldn't jeopardize what would be casualties for an escape she's too in the dark about. She doesn't know where they are. She doesn't know where the Resistance is now that they've a reason to change their locations after the attack that felt like a crushing sadness all throughout her. 

Ren knows just as well as she does that she can't leave yet. 

More to the Force, sure, because her heels are clicking down a metal hallway, muscle memory and vague recollection guiding her feet since her head can't be trusted. Her thoughts can't be trusted. 

She passes the cafeteria where the Stormtroopers are fed, silent and solitary, and the lurch of her stomach in hunger she's not sure will ever fade after the lives she's lived, the wonder that's still at so much food chosen for taste instead of nourishment -- it angers her. She does her best to breathe deeply as Master Luke instructed her, here in the middle of a shining corridor frigid even with her thick black overcoat. 

But it's like she's still in the snow. She's still feeling the power of an ancient magic flood through all of her, fill her like the beams of blue sizzling against sparking, angry red. 

She still feels the anger and the hatred and the hurt that threaten to bubble up and suffocate her, and she'd wanted to circle Kylo Ren like a predator, force him down to nothing, carve a matching gash of blood on the other side of his face. 

She feels the power of the voice that told her to kill him, the want to split his chest open with the lightsaber.

Mostly she feels the anger. She knows he feels it, too. 

"You aren't supposed to be in here," a voice sighs in plaintive annoyance when her shadow happens to darken the archway. 

She'd stopped subconsciously, and the stranger she is, the one she forces herself to be because she will leave, she almost apologizes, starts to bow her head meekly and turn around. Just she's more than that suddenly, when she glances up to pale eyes looking surprised to see her. 

"I didn't know Lord Ren was planning to let you wander wherever you wished," says Hux, a bit like a challenge, she thinks. 

She invites herself into the room she's never seen before, a plain looking office sparsely decorated unlike the few she's seen in her idly nonchalant assessing, and he straights himself in his chair. His hand looks like it's trying to tame the red hair stress had pulled at. "He doesn't say what I do or don't."

He doesn't smile. "But doesn't he?" Because he's.. he's envisioning Kylo Ren offering her a dark cloak, promising her the future as Empress to his Emperor of the Galaxy with clenched fists and expressive eyes and vows to reign everywhere and everything with hard resolve and something about never having to scavenge again. 

He almost snorts. 

"He might like to think he does," she grants him, remembering just who exactly General Hux was, what the nice Captain had to gripe about his constant disagreements with Ren.

It's like haggling more portions from Plutt, like Poe teaching her to play cards. 

"Perhaps you still shouldn't be here," though, he says, almost like he's advising. It's strange. His smile isn't really a smile, but it changes his face from impassive to human. 

Like he might be recognizing her thoughts like he can hear them, he gestures to the chair across from in desk in cordiality, like maybe he's thinking a friend or an ally might be had on the face of a soul that's an edge of a smile away.

"You haven't covered up those plans or maps or.." She squints from her seat, trying to read the documents on his desk from upside down. "Whatever those are."

"Schedule," he frowns. Except his mouth quirks up the next second, and he slides a container of caf, she thinks, closer to her side of the desk. His eyes catch, though, like he's just now noticing what he's been pretending to not see what he's been indirectly staring at for weeks. "You still have it."

And it's self-conscious, the way she raises her fingers to the collar of her coat, the one that's insignias are emblazoned his. "I'm sorry," she mumbles, because it isn't like it's security for her, it's not, but he starts to shake his head when she begins to shrug her arms out of the sleeves. 

"I have others." Quietly, he turns back to the files laid before him. He doesn't see the way she watches him. 

"Isn't posing as a General a crime?"

"Only if you -- you're joking," he realizes a second too late. "Pardon me for not laughing," he snipes, sounding so droll and unimpressed that she could laugh. But then rather amiably, inconspicuously, he almost shrugs. "Space is cold, after all."

And it does take a moment, but it's a lame statement that's also tactic permission and a kind offer when he spares a quick look at her. He's more subtle a diplomat than Ren gives him credit for, she realizes as she brushes her thumb over a pin on the coat's sleeve. 

They don't speak much, the three hours she sits with him as he works. 

She mistakenly calls him Brendol because she'd heard the name, and it was another few minutes until _yes, my name is Rey_ as if he didn't know, but it's the simplest, most pleasant time she's had on this ship since he told her to take a step and shrouded her in the First Order's colors. It's really not much of anything. 

For him neither. 

But then he says something sarcastic enough that makes Rey laugh.


	3. Malice

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He finds himself wanting to ask how old she is if she knows -- just what she is to Ren, if she knows. But instead he's collected and resolute, as disinterested as he can be when he's sure of the answer he's indirectly seeking. "He was so intent on finding you when we'd heard of the girl from Jakku."

He remembers a surly man that was little more than a boy. The pitch darkness of the galaxy, the coldness of a ship. 

_"Kylo,"_ he'd mistakenly addressed the young man when he'd reached the edge of the platform, the start of what the Chancellor promised as destiny. 

All he'd gotten was wide brown eyes gazing at him in alarm and offense, insult and the faintest trace of doubt, he thought, but this must have been fifteen years ago at least. Enough that he was just a soldier and Ren just a pawn. 

_"Lord Ren,"_ he corrected. The tips of his ears were starting to tinge red, and for having been handed all the galaxy and this pursuit of justice to eradicate darkness from it, he looks apprehensive. And scared. 

It hit him then that this was only a child, but if he himself was barely a man trying to fill his shined and steeled combat boots -- _"Of course,"_ he acquiesced, _"Lord. And perhaps one day, I'll be Lieutenant or Commander or Emperor,"_ he had said drolly. He hesitated only briefly before extending his hand. _"Hux. It's a pleasure."_

 _"It isn't,"_ Ren had replied, gruffly. _"And what's a title matter when you're born to your father's?"_

It was cheap. Like those black gloves he's wearing. But indignation rose from his throat like bile, and he could have smiled, could have, except those fateful words, _or your grandfather's_ , froze their eyes like ice. 

And that's what it was like to draw lines in a war zone, to commit to the aching resolution of camaraderie instead of merely tolerable companionship. Just two grown children gazing over the rest of destiny and aspiring potential. 

"I don't think anything of Kylo Ren," he answers her boredly. It's mostly a lie, though, but she's come to expect this annoyed snobbery from him. It makes her smile, however, and he watches her shoulders raise like she's taking her first breath in months. Her chest cavity fills and her lungs expand, and for not letting her guard down, she's as relaxed as he's ever seen her. 

"You don't think much of him," she corrects. The porcelain clinks when she sets her teacup down on its saucer, the frame of the chair creaks when she leans back to gaze at him. So inexpressively intense and focused he might be worried she's reading into his thoughts, but he's certain he'd feel if she were. 

He always does when Ren pries into his head.

"On the contrary," he amends, just a snippet of snide, "I think the world of him. The galaxy," he scoffs, so pretentious, but he's a man of his word. It takes more courage and will to accomplish what Ren has, and that isn't to be taken lightly. 

"What," she deadpans. "He's a fine asset is what you'll say next?"

"Only at times."

"Only at times," she agrees. Something touches her eyes then, something light with the glimmer of confiding a secret. "I nearly over-powered him today in the training room."

His brows arch. "I'm sure he'll say the same should I ask. Physically or with your.." Forgetting himself, he gestures vaguely. "Magic?"

"It isn't magic."

"It might be lots of things," he broods, self-important and self-righteous. "Science, an illusion. Some deity's good humor."

"Are you religious, Hux?" she teases, just barely. 

"Perhaps under the right circumstances."

" _He_ doesn't think much of you either," she tells him nonchalantly. She looks at him, and she.. she sees nothing at all. 

"Does he say so?"

"Sometimes. He doesn't say much about you when you aren't being conniving and trying to usurp his authority."

" _His_?" he near chokes. But he forgets himself too easily around her. He doesn't see her often, but today, sweat still silhouetting her brow, making her glow, the standard P.T. garb of troopers coloring in grey instead of black -- "Does he tell you much?"

"I can sense your pulse rising," she observes, so quiet that it's like a mystery, how oblivious she is. 

He's not rendered speechless often. It makes him inefficient. "Magic," is all he thinks to say. 

That quirk of her mouth. "I don't think you despise him."

And well, he might, he was evacuating the Starkiller and missed his shuttle to drag Ren out of the snow lifelessly. He missed the chance of the Supreme Leader's full trust in him because he knew there were limits, the man that had proven himself as _Lord_ Ren sometimes wept for all he'd done, the agony of it, the cruelty of it, he knew that, he knew that, there are limits. They might never say they chose wrong, but soldiers became pawns, he knew the parts of Ben Solo that still exist. 

And like she can read his mind, she simpers her mouth into the prettiest frown. "I called him Ben, and he didn't rage."

"That's not why Han Solo was killed," is all he states. Temperamental, Ren might be, and he.. he tries not to wonder if she's born physical witness to it. The bruises mottled on her arms. He doesn't let his eyes wonder. He doesn't think of how her rooms are directly connected to Ren's, how he came to him to request that construction. 

"He was a good man," she whispers. It's almost strange, the semblance of it, the mournful tone she's using. So few of them allow themselves time to grieve now. 

"I regret I never knew him, then."

"Do you mean that?"

He frowns to see her look doubtful, but then to find he means it when he says it, "I trust your judgments," and that was the downfall of kings, oh, dear. He finds himself wanting to ask how old she is if she knows -- just what she is to Ren, if she knows. But instead he's collected and resolute, as disinterested as he can be when he's sure of the answer he's indirectly seeking. "He was so intent on finding you when we'd heard of the girl from Jakku." 

He doesn't ask why, though, so she doesn't pursue it. Just looks like she's expecting something, like she's fucking full of more vitriol than he is.

"Why," he murmurs instead, only to clear his throat. "Why not have started for a village on that planet? Why stay where it's a wasteland?" Because he's nothing if not practical. And efficient. 

And something about this girl fascinates him, her wide eyes, her freckles, and it's not the intrigue lavished on a curiosity and a mystery that should be otherworldly and inferior to him. 

"I couldn't," she says. So impassive she could rile him or Ren, but the laugh she gives that isn't a laugh at all, "Do you know what it's like to have your choices taken from you, Hux?"

And she's bright. Maybe the brightest point in all the galaxy. This is the most loaded small talk he's ever had the (dis)pleasure of partaking in. 

"You're clever," he appraises. He's gone rigid, though, like she's anything but. "And a potential liability. You should know not to ask questions like that."

"That what?" She straightens up where she sits across from his desk and _glowers_. "That make you reconsider what you're told?"

"Rey." It's a warning, but it's only the fifth time he's spoken her name. "You were brought onboard this ship with the premonition you would take up our cause and.." And what? Destiny? Legacy? Another Skywalker overlooking all the systems and bending revelations to fulfill a mantra they repeat to themselves? Fate? How right they are? Bettering the universe?

"And?" she presses, leaning just slightly forward. 

His gaze doesn't stray. "You've been here long enough to have discerned what is routine and acceptable, yes?"

"I can barely find a fresher outside my own room."

"Would you like a map?" he drawls. "A tour, perhaps? Those aren't my responsibilities."

"If you'd overseen the construction of the facility here more efficiently," she snipes, snapping her gaze away.

"Are you.. are you laughing at me?" He has to consciously lock his jaw so he's not gaping at her and the inconspicuous way she's turning up her nose.

"Laugh at a general? Never," she lies, just as good as if she isn't. Both her brows raise at him, and he could laugh if he weren't filled with dread suddenly, an impossible sort of anticipation. "Even if you're the only friend I have here," she adds elusively, bringing herself up to stand. 

He rises, instinct, formality, respect, he does, sounding without authority and contrition when he protests, "I am not your friend. I won't ever be, Rey."

His eyes narrow to convict his statement and the truth of it, but she's got that look that warns she isn't one to be ordered around, and --

And a spark, and he remembers when he used to believe so. And the changes they've all made, oh. 

"You aren't," she reaffirms stoically. 

"I'm not."

"You won't be," she agrees -- or something close in meaning. 

"I won't be."


	4. Vigilance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He's captivated. He feels he's doing something wrong. This has to be a trick, it has to be, because she asked him what the First Order meant to accomplish, and where had the answer of eradication gone? _What we have to_ , he thought, _we're merely trying_.

"You're distracting one of the best men on this ship," Ren tells her. If he wasn't trying to sooth her like he would a savage animal, then he'd snarl. He'd be loud and angry and unforgiving, but she knows him well enough to sense the malice. _One of my best men_ ; he doesn't entirely trust her still. "He's second-in-command here. You shouldn't disturb his efforts here."

As if she'll poison him to detriment. "Second?" she only asks him, but in a droll, bored tone he recognizes all too well. A stolen dark coat still weighs at her shoulders, and she doesn't miss the way his eyes narrow. Just because they don't duel to the death no longer means they can't hurt each other.

"Yes."

"Darth Vader was never going to be the Galactic Emperor," she tells him. And that shadow of the past, the skeletons and ashes littering the bottom of his closet -- he's still so afraid.

They could leave right now. They could get on a ship and go back to Luke and Leia and overthrow the First Order and restore peace to the Galaxy. They could hold their heads up high at the end of it all, all the humility of the Jedi that came before them, the honor and the serenity so prevalent and binding them all.

They could just run away somewhere else, someplace far away from politics and war zones where the Order couldn't reach them and the Resistance couldn't be betrayed or joined. They could just be people lying low, living a lifetime forever and playing the hands they've been dealt.

They could take the steps of destiny promised before them, too. They could outline the rest of the world in stars and constellations, pinpricks of light only seen because of the darkness in their shadows, the twisted double-edge of ultimatums and cruel peace treaties.

They could just go to Leia. She misses her.

She knows he misses Han. He doesn't watch her go.

\- -- - -- -

"So," she tells him, clinking the little cup of tea against its saucer. Either he's excelled at multi-tasking or can just pretend to listen while he's fully committed to his work and the easiness of ignoring Skywalkers, Solos, the legacy of these Jedi that burned up just like the Force Tree. "Tell me something."

"It depends on what it is," he acquiesces, not looking up.

Like a conspiracy, she lightens her voice. "What would you call captivity?"

When he looks up, he looks relaxed enough here to let his eyes show the exhaustion he feels. "As an official diplomat or unofficially the enemy?"

"Both."

"Diplomatically, you're not being held captive. Certain measures to restrain the clearance you're allowed, however, until your loyalties and your value and your --"

"My _value_?"

"-- merit in our Order," he states, voice hard and his hand held up to her interruption, "can be trusted for our safety --"

"Yours?" she nearly spits.

Lazily, he shrugs. Sighs. "They're to be kept in place to prevent you from overhearing or seeing things we wouldn't want you to."

"Why?" The energy in this room, she feels it in her clenched fists.

All he does is look at her, but she can't tell if it's daze or disappointment. "You're bright." So eloquent, bristled, he reverts his attention back to the documents on his desk. "Work out why by yourself."

"..Unofficially, then," she says after a moment that stretches like infinity. It's forced and intentional this time. How he doesn't glance at her indirectly. Or at all.

"You're a prisoner here, _unofficially, then_ ," he tells her. "A guest by any other definition," but oh, that stings, "yet a prisoner. You may as well be on trial."

"In a cell?" She frowns, and for a second, she thinks he'll tell her to not.

"You've been ensured comfort and necessities and freedom, haven't you?"

"Not officially, apparently," she quips.

"You're hilarious."

"I don't think he likes that you've given me your access keys to the archives," she says. It isn't like it's a secret -- after all, _if you're so intent on rising up here, you'll have to educate yourself_ , Hux told her. He just told her that while he was distracted, overseeing something that didn't add up in the taken numbers, so he wasn't looking at her when he didn't realize this access he'd given her to history, to records -- he was giving her a part of the world.

And he called her _doll_ at the end of it, quick around the corners of his mouth like it was a habit or nothing at all.

"Ren doesn't enjoy lots of things," he says distantly.

"Unlike you," she scoffs.

And the way his eyes brighten, he could be smiling. He's not really a General in his office, not when she's here to make time go by so fast. "I can get you dramavids instead of just the ones about historical documentaries."

"Can you?"

"With the appropriate discretion," he snarks. He doesn't know the plots and the themes of some of the better ones, of course not, the humor shining in her eyes, it's like the herbal tea was tipped with brandy. "The vids could get you out of here, at the least."

"And what would you do then?" she asks lightly. Like something foreboding, she stands up and it's like a premonition, guides her arms through the sleeves of the General's jacket.

He rises with her respectfully, manners even until the last, except he suddenly looks so lost. "I haven't the faintest idea," he tells her, tongue and cheek, she flips her hair out of the coat's collar.

And he watches, and right now, he's not the man he should be.

"Thank you for the tea," she calls.

Her back to him, he nods, but he wonders if she can sense it. "I'll see you."

\- -- - -- -

He doesn't.

Precisely the same time she doesn't bother to knock on the door because he can order it open from a control panel at his desk because a holoscreen and he can see the entire corridor, it's not like it's sensing with the Force, but the blessings of technology. Lifeforms have come so far.

She's not sure if she doesn't stop by his office because she's sure somehow he won't be there. Maybe it became too ritual, so built up out of nothing so quick, she knows how he slouches now. She knows the different meanings behind his heavy sighs, the practiced, well-timed scowls that disguise his yawns.

Not that she knows, but she thinks he's human enough that he'd bleed red if she cut him.

She just doesn't think she wants to anymore.

When she isn't being given a wide berth by various officials that are frightened and suspicious of her -- as they should be, she doesn't introduce herself, she interrogates -- she spends her time watching holovids from the archives. Government and politics until one she sees has a beautiful image on the cover: a field of green, a woman in a flowing gown, a summary of something about choices and love and destiny. The heroine (that's utterly inefficient when it comes to flight or fight skills of self-preservation) gets to choose between love and honor, one bachelor or another.

One of the men dies, valiant and heroic, and it shouldn't matter when all the lives have been lost in a real world where grief still torments, but she cries anyways.

She cries. It's only the third time she has since she was boarded this ship, though. Then she finds the training footage of Finn.

\- -- - -- -

"Do you consider his life a liability?"

"A -- a liability?" Incredulously, he -- she _evicts_ from him. She evokes, too, too many things have been taken for granted. It's like a switch.

She makes him think. She makes him remember the once he watched Senator Organa debate some principle or another on a holoscreen from inside a shop. Her questions made him think. He's captivated. He feels he's doing something wrong. This has to be a trick, it has to be, because she asked him what the First Order meant to accomplish, and where had the answer of eradication gone? _What we have to_ , he thought, _we're merely trying_.

"It's what they were raised for. Trained for all their lives," he says.

"Not by choice," she reminds him, voice hard. Finn wouldn't have chosen this.

"But FN-2187 chose to leave if you'll recall correctly."

"So you tried to kill him?"

"Not personally," he quips, not a joke at all, neither of them are laughing, and this feels so much like an ultimatum. Like he's one foot in, one foot out, stepping out of a starship and combusting. By the Maker. "He escaped with that Resistance pilot."

"Poe."

"Dameron," he says idly. "I remember. Should they have made it back to a Resistance base, he could have told the Order's secrets and jeopardized thousands of lives. _That_ would have been a liability. One life or thousands? You know which you'd prefer."

"But he was unconscious in the medbay still," she challenges, trying to think calm, to find serenity, to not give in when everything is so dark here. "They said he'd probably be paralyzed." And her hands are starting to tremble, and she counts to ten. Imperceptibly, so imperceptibly, it's like a change in gravity, the tea tray starts to rattle, she's angry, and he can't even look up from his damned paperwork. "Hux. _Hux_."

"What do you expect me to say?" he huffs, nearly rising up from his chair. Their eyes flash, angry, but in that second, he realizes he owes this girl nothing, no explanation, no peace of mind. "I am your superior," he says in a clipped, low bark. As unsurprised he is when she doesn't shrink to cower, he's not displeased, he's not -- she's venomous.

"I've given you the reasons when I've no obligation to, so I suggest any other grievances you ought to take up with Ren. He was FN-2187's executioner in any case," he tells her, his jaw locked.

And time stretches and slows once more. Enough that he can't keep holding her intense, earnest stare, but the moment he returns to his work, she speaks, "Finn."

"Beg pardon?"

He watches her jaw set, the paling expanse of her neck. "We called him Finn. That was his name," she tells him like she's accusing him of something, the treason the Stormtrooper committed. Her free will to reside here or her captivity here depending on the graciousness of her mood. "He died with a name. And friends. And respect."

Her gaze is still holding his, so impossibly, _impossibly_ , he sighs. She raises her chin like victory, hazel eyes lightening, and this must be the start of his undoing. He's sure of it. He'll think about it tomorrow. "Finn," he tries quietly, testing the name. The implication of saying it. "Finn."

Her eyes start to redden just so, but he pretends not to notice. It's only right.

"He might have come to take Phasma's position one day," he tells her, more gentle than he's ever addressed her with. He means it to be a condolence of some sort, suggesting he's offering it like an olive branch or an apology, oh, _kriff_ , but it only hardens her face. That he wants to offer this girl any semblance of comfort, stars, to care he's insulted her integrity when she's only indulged his pride. "I mean," he tries again, calmly clearing his throat without a lick of nonchalance, "he had the heart of a leader. Perhaps even moreso in the Resistance than here."

"Here is awful," she gripes after a moment too long. It might be one of the most honest sentiments he's heard in weeks. Except she smiles just barely after that, a flash of white teeth it makes everything so bright, and he has to remember what they're fighting for. Eradication. Whatever they must.

"Perhaps," he exhales, letting his shoulders sag, "anything can be justified."

"You sound as if you believe that."

"I think I do, doll," he smiles, polished and idle.

Like routine, that fire in her must have been placated with that, the winning and the losing battle in him that could be changing or might not be a fight at all. Not satisfied, but not unhappy either, she relaxes her posture. The cushions of her chair creak just barely when she shifts, tucking her knees beneath her and relaxing in her own show of permanence here, longevity, but manners to the last. "Would you mind if I stayed?" she asks.

There's not the hesitance there should be since most they seem to do is argue, but "No," he speaks, too forgiving, too easy here. He hasn't anywhere to be until later in the afternoon, but even then he doubts he'd want her gone. "You know I wouldn't.


	5. Benediction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The collar of his coat frames her skin, glimpses of it framing the delicate lines of her collarbones, and she doesn't look demure or spiteful or particularly seductive, avenging. She looks like she could be his. He should have done more to keep her out of his office.

It wouldn't be a lie to say she has everything she'd need. Now, it wouldn't be an exaggeration either, but she has a partial kitchen. She has a fresher. The amenities are stocked lavishly, every quarter of this chamber meant to see to her every need should -- as he must wish -- she never leave her room. 

There's more food than she could ever need, but she hates, she _hates_ how the packaged foods are the ones she learned were her favorite in the Resistance Base, she can not _stand_ how aside from a few bottles of juice, there's nothing but water stocked and hidden away in the cabinets like she'd need the supply. Like the desert is still in her, like she fears, and she's so angry. It's precisely how she would have wanted it, but that Ren must have known. How Ren must have known --

She's angry. 

She feels volatile and destructive. 

Sometimes it's so quiet that she thinks she can hear voices, whispering, jeering voices that sooth her eruptive anger to collected rage, free to boil and brim underneath her skin until they can fulfill the bidding crooned at her like a caress, _kill him_ , that crackling of his lightsaber just as volatile as both of them, fire against the snow, the fissure that hadn't separated them as it was meant to. 

But her hatred, how she hates Kylo Ren and the way revenge tasted on her tongue, something lustful and warm and powerful in the pit of her stomach, in the dark notches of her ribs, it's like a winning and a losing battle. 

She remembers the lines around Luke's eyes and how grief softened them the way happiness did. She holds onto his mantra of patience; serenity; Maker forbid, forgiveness; justification; and the goodness that's supposed to prevail them all, and she doesn't. She doesn't know. In an unforgiving world where optimism was only kept with hope hanging by the skin of her teeth, her patience has never been exhausted to the point it no longer exists. If the boundaries of her forgiveness had stretched parsecs in excusing her parents' absence because just that, they were _hers_ , they could do no wrong, then every generation that has being a Skywalker forgiving family for the sake of blood and midichlorians -- why couldn't she forgive Kylo Ren?

Imagine it. General Organa had forgiven her prodigal son with her mother's love the instant Ben had murdered Han. It was difficult even though it wasn't, because the measures taken, she could believe that wasn't really Ben. It was Snoke and the failures a childhood had reaped. 

General Hux had said that anything could be justified. 

She isn't sure he's wrong. 

There's guilt and there's regret and there's being stuck on this ship, sailing in the galaxy, lost in transit. 

So much in this room is faded black.

\- -- - -- -

Ren says she's avoided because she's feared. Hux says it's because she's respected. 

It was him she asked if they meant the same thing to him, two words hand in hand and complimentary since they could have described him, but he laughed at her in that forced way he does 'cause she's so hilarious, clearly.

"Shut up," he told her without malice, not looking up from his datapad. And it may be both, she's angry and she's on edge, but not here. Not here. "If you need better company, there are lots of decent women on this ship. One technician is expecting, I believe. Do you like children?"

"I don't know," she answered honestly, crossing her arms.

"Well. Our PR could use being perceived as more humanitarian," he frowned, and watching him gather documents, discs, prepare for a meeting -- this seemed like a habit. "Remind me to do something about that, would you?"

"If I don't forget."

"Thank you, doll."

"Can I go wherever you're going?" she wonders, lingering in her spot at the open doorway like a shadow.

He doesn't say that it'd be boring, that it'd run late. "Restricted to officers only."

"And you."

"And me," he grants her, the trials of life, his annoyance so contrite that it makes her grin. Ready, he starts for the door just to stop. "I'm forgetting something," he narrates.

And it's a beat before she realizes what's missing, what doesn't give him the prestige and the title that's security around her shoulders and an idle comfort that isn't hers but _is_ , "Here," she says as she shrugs out of the too-long sleeves, the hem of his coat trailing across the floor when it slips from her shoulders and into his hands so -- he'd crossed the space to her like it was nothing at all, but he pauses. 

"Are you sure?" he asks her quietly, and as idle and disinterested as he seems, she realizes he must not miss much at all.

"You'll give it back," she smiles just barely, so sure, he raises a brow at her as he slips his arms into the coat and straightens the collars, the pins that name him or her General. 

"I'll give it back."

\- -- - -- -

"You've met with the Supreme Leader, haven't you?"

"Yes," Hux says, clipped.

She blinks. She waits. That can't be it. "And?" she presses as idly as she can, schooled nonchalance just intrigue burning her up into laughing curiosity when he deadpans at her. 

"And we meet occasionally for tea," he teases, mirthful instead of droll. His eyes glimmer bright blue when she looks, relaxed to the picture of ease, and suddenly -- gallant in a way and kind. They'd hate the comparison, but he's not the complete opposite of Finn. It hits her like a bolt.

"What's He like?" she asks quietly. 

"You haven't met Him," Hux seems to realize at once. It almost makes her feels like this is information she's betrayed, but.. no. He doesn't seem smug about it or over-analytical. He slumps back into his chair in a way she's never seen him do, relaxed like he might when he's alone with his hand on his jaw, his eyes contemplative. She waits, but finally, a winning and a losing battle, no matter what he might tell her, she's so willing to fight. 

"All good masters have a way of seeing more of our faults than we'd like, I suppose," he says, sounding far away. "He's like that."

Instantly, her mouth twists cruelly. "Master?" 

"No," he affronts, because oh, they know each other so well, he knows how her nose will scrunch, how she'll glance up and to the right and start to debate morality with him because he was careless with a phrase like he _knew_ wouldn't be sufficient enough. "We're not his slaves. Don't -- Rey, stop making that face. I don't have the patience for this today," he sighs. But he's laughing to himself, for inevitably, this feels like rain. 

She loves it. She hates this, but she loves it. "..So he's condescending," she wonders lightly, an olive branch extended. 

"He can be, particularly to Ren."

"Do you think he's overly zealous?"

"No."

"What do you think about him?" she probes. 

The shell of his mind, though, there's only indifference without the fear that worries her, the trepidation that has people in the hallways indifferently staring to the floors, the walls ahead like they're undeclared transients.

"I wonder why Ren hasn't introduced you. I know the Supreme Leader has taken an interest," he says. That he thinks Snoke is critical, he doesn't. 

"And you?"

"And me what?" he smiles, as most he can when he's half-distracted, just the upward curve of his mouth so slight. 

If she couldn't _feel_ , she wouldn't know. "You've taken an interest in me?" she asks him, so quiet. So, so quietly, he looks to her and she isn't being coy or wry or sultry.

She looks like she's standing in the overlook. All the world ahead in an endless night, stars stretching on and on with promise ahead, destiny and legacy and forgiveness, and she's got potential in one hand with all the darkness that could connote with it. She's got her heart in the other hand, though. She has part of his, too, he thinks. 

"You should go," is all he says, his voice hushed. The eye contact too much to bear. 

"No."

"Excuse me?"

"You can't make me leave," she reminds him. She sounds just a trace too desperate to be indifferent, though, too lost in seconds ago to breathe normally. 

"I could," he challenges weakly. He has to clear his throat, has to not stare at the pink starting to flush her cheeks, starting to color down her neck to the rise and fall of her chest framed prettily by the red blush. The unintentional timber of his words better befit closed doors, a bed, fuck, a desk even, but here where she looks curled in conflict, her pink lips scarcely parted, no. 

The collar of his coat frames her skin, glimpses of it framing the delicate lines of her collarbones, and she doesn't look demure or spiteful or particularly seductive, avenging. She looks like she could be his. He should have done more to keep her out of his office. He shouldn't want to see just how low that flush goes, if it spreads down her tan skin like fire, if she'll open herself up to him. 

"Your thoughts are loud," she whispers, her eyes wide. 

It might be practicality, so he isn't embarrassed, doesn't feel how shame can be a slow burn similar to desire when it's a ghost of fingertips tracing the planes of skin. "Your cheeks are red."

"They're not," so fucking vehemently, she denies it, a winning and a losing battle, when she brings her hand up to her burning face, the sleeves are nearly too long to reveal her fingers and he isn't being absentminded when he reaches out for her.

So lightly, he holds her wrist, pays no mind to how her breath stalls when he takes her hand in his, brushing his thumb over her knuckles like he's a gentleman, like they're anywhere else, closed doors, a bed, this desk. He rolls the sleeve down so it's cuffed around her wrist, just a breath of tan skin paling on the back of her hand, and then like gravity. Like predestination, the Maker's good humor, happenstance, fate, chance, anything but a mistake, but fallibility, her mouth so pink, he stands when she does. 

Her chair scrapes against the floor, a paper crumples beneath his hand 'cause he doesn't care, she's pulling at the collar of his coat, drawing him in and it's tantalizing, his soul is smoldering under her eyes and it's scorching, this is divination, her palm is over his heart. 

She could pull it out, she could eat it and it'd be a blood orange; hazy and hot, their mouths aren't locked but they're breathing the same air stolen out of their lungs and pliant, it isn't conflict staining her cheeks red. He feels her shudder, something pulsating and bright that tries to bring them together just body to body, this desk is like a fissure between them, but when he splays his fingers over her cheek, caressing her jawline, he feels just how hot her skin is. 

It isn't enough, he feels the faint imprint of her lips against his jaw like she's breathing him in, like she can't, just a tilt of her head and they'd be kissing, their noses brush, his teeth skim her ear, then it all stops when she tenses.

"Wait," she mumbles, a sigh. She tips her head back when the door slides open like a hiss, but he's watching her speckled green eyes flutter closed while she tries to breathe. 

"There you are," says Ren, and his dark eyes are flashing, assessing and predatory as he leans against the wall. His mask is in the crook of his arm, and he isn't quite smirking at Hux. It's twisted and cruel and worse, shadowed and cynical when he focuses on Rey. 

"I was looking for you, _doll_ ," Ren snarks. "I thought we could have a cup of tea."


	6. Dubiety

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The legacies they bare and the burdens they carry and the unwillingness to admit the mistake, that this is all wrong, they weren't destined for this.

Everything changes, but nothing really does all at once.

Maybe she's acting out to prove she isn't a prisoner, maybe she wishes Ben weren't her family so she wouldn't have to forgive him in spite of the fact. It'd be easier despite it; it'd be an execution of her free will, she saw a troop of children dressed in white armor that kriffing _saluted_ her, no one has free will here, _no one_ , no one --

"I don't know why I'm here," she says. She counts to ten. Her hands are starting to shake.

"You will see reason," Ren says through his mask, cold and mechanical. "You're meant for so much more, we --"

"We could what?" she interrupts him. Her laugh is so desperate. "Overthrow the Supreme Leader? Rule the Galaxy?"

His head tilts to the left. Like a predator, she thinks he's calculating her, but he's locked her in her room like she was a child, he's dueled her in a quiet, padded room, only crippling fear had her realizing he wasn't holding back this time.

His lightsaber crackled across her face, under her eye, splitting her face in half, but to prove a point, he healed the burnt cut through the Force.

"Is it so difficult," he starts calmly, yet she can sense the underlying impatience, "is it so difficult for you to view this war from our perspective? For being so morale, you make too many assumptions. You're too judgmental."

"No," she denies. Like she learned to hit first, reason later, steadily walk on sloping sand dunes, she's realized it all depends on where you're standing, but for what is good and what is right, she. She. She's losing here. "Hux and I have debated that," she admits. Her voice is starting to shake, too. Is something really wrong in the sense those acting believing they're in the right? That they're striving to accomplish the greater good?

"You and Hux talk a lot," he states, monotone.

She means to react calmly, to bait him with her control, but damn her resolve, she's so volatile. "You won't let me communicate with any of my other friends!"

"What friends?" For a second, she thinks he's smiling, but the voice box of his garb, he could be apologetic for all she can tell. "There aren't many of them left, Rey."

"No one left but you, is that it?" She visibly bristles, she tries to take a calm breath. It isn't supposed to be like this, she's supposed to find the weaknesses of this Base and exploit them until the First Order implodes. She wasn't supposed to forget herself to the contradiction of it all: the desperation and the regret and the doubt because she can feel it.

She feels him wake from his nightmares where Han is dying and he can't clean his blood-stained hands.

"We don't get to choose our family," he's saying, not looking at her. "So what if I'm all you have?"

She's lying through her teeth. "I was better off on Jakku."

"But you could excel here, Rey. Just let me help you."

Her hands are still shaking.

"Hux isn't your friend. He'll betray you."

\- -- - -- - 

For looking like all the worlds are at his disposal, offered to him in treaties and surrender, destined for him like a premise, he sees Lord Ren with his hand-me-down title and the guilt he wears under the black garb. The sleepless nights and the regret, just give them back the last twenty years, they'll do better, this is a mistake, they're not meant to be here,

"Leave," he tells her.

He straightens; he makes a show of being in control, of being a General, but it's always the really well put-together ones that are ripping at the seams. It feels like gravity is tearing apart his head.

The door latches closed. He looks up and he shouldn't have, she's shrouded in white, there's blood on her rosy cheeks, some pilots claim they go mad, that they see angels, but she --

"Leave," he says again, impatiently.

"Why does the Galaxy need balance?" she blurts. "Why isn't there any order in the world? What happened that this ship has to bring it?" She's all but collapsed against the sliding door, the cold of the metal starting to prickle at her exposed arms, the sweatiness of her skin condensation against the reflective surface. She'd be here even if she left.

It's a double-edged sword. "This isn't my responsibility," he begins, so contrite, but her chest heaves as she inhales claustrophobically. "Maker's sake, sit down and calm yourself." He doesn't have to be annoyed; if she's so important to the Supreme Leader, if she matters more than all the First Order together, then _why_ does Ren only cause of her distress. Why did he have to watch him cleave her face in two helplessly? "Do you need water? A cold compress?" he asks her, more sigh than concern. The red, irritated skin of her face, this -- this is why men kill.

Forget the war.

"Do you need a medic?"

"No," she tells him, crossing the room and pouring herself into the chair opposite his desk like whiskey. "I want to know why we're fighting. I --"

"We?" he interrupts, shocked into silence. It has him headless for a moment.

"What is so wrong that you have to fix it? Why was peace destroyed in the first place?"

"Rey," but she holds up her hand. She makes breathing look so blessed.

"Don't," she whispers. Tenderly, she presses her fingertips so lightly to her forehead. "Don't tell me you don't know the answers to everything. Don't lie to me."

"..I wasn't," he says after hesitating, lying straight through his almost-smile. "But."

Her eyes narrow at him, a flash of piercing green, and she's too into her head, she's drowning in this sea of stars swirling in the backdrop behind his face, she's sitting and all the galaxy is right here. All she has to do is reach for it. She closes her hands into fists. "I know what you're going to say."

Unimpressed, he pretends to watch her, not what's the shade of a scar tomorrow won't display. "Should I humor you regardless?"

She draws her lower lip between her teeth slowly, considering. Distracting him, but she's as attentive to detail as he is, the way he hasn't properly breathed since she invited herself in against regulation. "Say something else," she commands.

Like an empress.

"I'm not the one that's supposed to persuade you to our side," he chooses.

And her voice is quicker than her head. "But you're the only one I trust."

"Now _that_ was a lie, doll," he quips, dripping candor instead of disdain. "You don't trust a single soul here."

"Do you believe in souls?"

 _In angels_ , he doesn't say, but she smiles nonetheless, she doesn't contradict him nor affirm it.

"Why do we only talk in here?" she wonders next, and what is he supposed to remark to that?

He idly stacks stray documents on his desk, oblivious to how he's turning them upside down, shuffling them out of their chronological order. "Ren threatened my life the last time you were here," he offers up like anything but a peace offering.

She isn't about to validate him, there's no need, the sun is in her skin and her bones will always know starvation and she doesn't have the jurisdiction to play executioner and benefactor. She can't claim Ren wouldn't kill him because he's too important. There was a time Kylo Ren presumed the same of Snoke, but the Supreme Leader wanted Rey to kill Ben. He urged her to without hesitating or considering what it'd do to lose all of that power and those years spent nurturing him into who he was?

What won't anyone here do for power? How much of this is really about bettering the world? Where are the lines drawn and who is really on which side?

Again like she's collapsing, like her lungs are, she leans back into the chair. She counts to ten. She tries to see the Resistance Base and the light in it, but for just an instant, she wonders at the complications of changing a universe as it needs with someone like-minded, a red emblazoned insignia on a coat, the benefits of those complications and the starkness between what is good and what may be _right_ , but how much of that is temptation?

How much is seduction, how much is genuine, is he even -- "We didn't kiss," she unnecessarily tells him.

 _That_ , that results in no reaction from him. He's better at this than she is. "I am aware of that, if you can imagine it."

"I was trying to comfort you in justifying your impending death," she frowns, because this is such a double-edged blade.

He rolls his eyes. Imperceptibly, she feels her breathing quicken, "If I'm to be condemned guilty," he's saying grandiosely, smug, looking at her in such a way it's just last week and their bodies moving without their minds, "shouldn't the punishment be a result of the crime?"

"Crime," she repeats. Her brows furrow like almost distaste --

"Not to dishonor you," he remedies, reaching up and scathing his fingers through his hair. "The last thing I'm intending is to insult you. That is, I'm," his mouth purses. He shakes his head to himself, he looks like _I'm sorry_ but he's acting like this encounter is a task he can count off his list. "That was a moment of weakness."

Something in his tone is mechanical and distant. It's hitting her the wrong way. "Mine or yours?"

"It shouldn't have happened," he finally exhales, looking like he's warring with himself.

"Nothing did," she tries, but oh, he laughs and it's so cruel sounding, so empty.

" _Nothing_?" He can still feel her skin, and noth-- "Alright," he says collectively. "That's it, then."

Silence settles, yet when she considers breaking it, he speaks up again. "I _am_ sorry," he says quietly, the words strange like he's unaccustomed to them. "Rey."

But suddenly, the fact of the matter -- for this, she isn't. "I'm really not," she tells him, careless and idle.

He doesn't quite smirk, but his eyes lighten when he looks at her. "Is that so?"

She looks at him, really looks at him, and now that she's relaxed, that her skin has cooled, she feels the cold. She misses his jacket. "Maybe moreso if I actually knew your name," she can't help but grant him.

He watches her stretch her pale arms up, curl her hand over her cheek. "You do."

She clarifies, "Your first name," as she pulls herself up and studies the reactions under his cold exterior, his cynical frown.

Except he genuinely laughs so rarely, _oh_ , she thinks. _Oh, no_. "General is all you'll need to call me."

"That isn't it."

"Is _Rey_ even your true name?" he challenges gently. "Names change. They don't matter."

"No." Lightly, she hears herself sighing. "Not much does, apparently."

"No, it doesn't."

 _Why don't you go find yourself a kitchen whore?_ Ren had sneered at him. The legacies they bare and the burdens they carry and the unwillingness to admit the mistake, that this is all wrong, they weren't destined for this.

They've gone too far, though. They probably can't stop.

"You're to address me only by _General_ or _Hux_ ," he warns her. They're both titles some say he didn't didn't deserve even though he's tried to earn them. "I know you've read about my father in the archives."

She just nods; there isn't really anything to say when he sounds doubtful, like he's offering up something he shouldn't, a piece of himself he can't receive back.

"My name is Armitage. No one has called me that in years."


	7. Detriment

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Yes," because she has to understand, he'll be holding her cold, dead hand, "Rey, right and good depends on where you're standing. Isn't evil subjective? This is a rebellion."

He looks at her and thinks -- gods.

She was so young.

And he was so dissembled by contradiction.

And perhaps, they were so in love.

But that is neither here nor theirs, the past if not the future, the moment at present where the port windows make the edge of the galaxy look like an abyss waiting on the brink of something vast and empty. Something impending and telling; the bleak darkness that stretches on for miles, he tries not to dwell on it.

How uttering the command to fire makes his throat tight.

Before her, before the attack that destroyed another planet, left all she had left of her world in shambles.

Before even Ren's world was left in disparate pieces, too, when he ordered those planets attacked and watched them streak red in the sky. It was after in an occupational hazard, the sense of justice and pursuit that just didn't feel _right_ no matter what the structures mandated.

("Are you all right?" he had asked Ren stiffly, minutes before the departure to Maz Kanata's castle.

"I'm fine," he huffed, mechanical and grating. "The weapon -- it met expectations."

He meant, he heard a thousand souls cry out in terror, felt their pain and their suffering and their unfathomable hope, and _he stood there_.)

Not for the first time in hours, Hux has to remind himself that this is a war. That they're not playing at battles like wooden toys and impressionable gallantry.

He remembers holding tiny model TIE-fighters as a ruddy-faced boy, adding his sound effects as he played war on a stained, carpeted floor. Pretended he would once be Emperor of the Galaxy because he had no notion of the logistics and the sacrifice: his own moral ambiguity, self-destructive conflict. All of his pretense in believing what is right is also inherently good just in the preemptive understanding that it would have to be right to be implemented.

Again, he reminds himself that this is a war.

\- -- - -- -

"You should know all exits now," he states, really rather boredly. "You should be confident in your ability to find escape pods in the event of a power shortage, too. Tell me," he begins, and _oh_ , how pale she looks, how small she is sheathed in his coat. But how deadly, the bruises bled into her knuckles, oh, no; this has really -- it's going to implode, they are, like live wire, and they have no idea. "There is a shipment being exported soon. Will you steal aboard the vessel, transmit your signals to whoever is waiting in the Resistance?"

Really, they have to stop meeting like this. "How far would I get?" she wants to know, humoring him.

"You wouldn't make it past security."

"Try me."

"Transport out occurs at 1800. Try yourself, but prepare for the consequences."

"I could do it," she tells him, and _there_. There's where the crack in her mask is: the panic in her desperation that can't even laugh it off. She knows how long she can survive on an empty stomach, how long she can live hungry; she knows how to survive without water; how to live like all she'll see is the sun and _never again_ is this mantra as cold as the Galaxy brought to its feet. Stars, she could genuinely cry in conviction. She could claw out his heart with her teeth and swallow the pit. She's not one of them, he knows, " _Armitage_ ," she swears, raising her chin. "I could do it."

"I don't think you would make it."

"Fuck whatever you think," she rasps. "Are you going to stop me?"

He doesn't answer, really just because he doesn't know if he would if it came to it, if liberty. If _love_ \--

"You keep telling me I'm not a prisoner," she continues, her voice so close to angry and hurt. It's gravel under his feet. "Doesn't that mean I go when I want?"

 _Yes_ , he knows, but he doesn't know if the softness of that last line was a trick. "You're more of a restrained guest. You know this. You know you couldn't leave."

"I was thinking of a transportation shuttle out somewhere," she tells him. It's like the room is starting to vibrate. "No one would suspect or have to know."

"You're so stupid," he says.

"I'm not. What other chance do I have?"

"Everything has been promised to you here," he reasons. And looking at her, the mirror bloody hurts. "You'll have power. You'll have respect. You'll have an empire that isn't corrupt --"

" _No_ ," she says like she's begging, teeth grit.

"Yes," because she has to understand, he'll be holding her cold, dead hand, "Rey, right and good depends on where you're standing. Isn't evil subjective? This is a rebellion."

"What you've done is murder!"

"And you," he says, dear gods, he's up at once to close the door. Turning back, though, she's facing him, too, standing like -- like this is the executioner's block and he could save her, _hell_ is the beautiful look of hope on her face: the sheer link of agony. "Rey, doll, who have you killed? Whose station of employees did you _blow up_ of innocent men and women?"

"The Resistance Base!" She's practically shrieking, raising her arms like she'll strike him if he might deserve it, "Leia, Finn, Poe, every other living soul!"

"Starkiller Base!" he shouts back, red and shaking. In a quick, hard movement, he takes hold of her shoulders and squeezes, doesn't fight against her wince because this mockery, this symbol of perdition and her own self-righteous blindness. "Did you honestly think," he begins, pitched so low.

She writhes against his hold, lifts her leg to strike him, but she's no match, really, not against the crushing truth.

"Did you honestly think there was justice in killing cooks, janitors, technicians who had no part in this cause aside from their residence on Starkiller? Look at me! Was there honor in bombing the homes of families, giving not even the _innocent_ time to evacuate? Was that right?" he asks her cruelly.

"They did terrible things."

"The cooks in the mess hall did terrible things? Scavenger," _oh_ , his laugh isn't a laugh at all, "if their feeding the bellies of the First Order is an act of terrorism, then fine," he seethes. "I presumed you of anyone would think everyone has the rights to eat."

"Don't you dare," she hisses, "don't you dare."

"The troopers, then? If you say they're brainwashed, then why didn't you offer any of them the chance you gave Finn? Where was their redemption?"

"Stop it."

"Or was it because you loved him? Passion's as good a cause as any. Not love, but perhaps lust if you --"

She slaps him.

The tension in his office amounts just as it's faded. Colors of gray all coagulated to piercing white: his red cheek, her pale palm still open and threatening, as surprised yet resigned as she looks.

"You could be imprisoned for that," he warns so, _so_ quietly.

"And I could kill you," she swears, clenching her jaw prettily.

"Yes. But I could kill you."

"You won't," she's sure. Must be enough to drop her hand, splay her palm over his collar. "I know you won't."

"You can't predict the future. Ren says you can't predict the future."

"It's not a prediction," she says. The room tremors so faintly, or it's -- it's him that's shaking. Wavers like a man lost when she's looking up at him. "I see things, Armitage."

"Hux," he corrects, because he's so tactical, _focus_ , how to -- how to make an apology out of a battle zone. Bleeding skies, his own heart cindering to blazen flesh. Her eyes so brown and green and blue but green. "Do you see yourself here," he wants to know, and does -- the tactic way she's looking away like this is permission, like this is why she's trying to run but can't bring herself out of his grip. "Or out there, Rey. _Rey_."

It's like a constellation being painted, this dress she has in her all at once. She barely whispers, "Here," and collapses against his chest.


	8. Conviction

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "This is a _war_."
> 
> "This isn't your war!"

At night, the long walk from one end of the ship to the other is a path lit by clinical whites and dim, faint yellows. The light juxtaposes the Galaxy's darkness in a way that isn't harsh, just clean, bright light illuminating each corridor, making the most of routine and practicality and efficiency.

Only, tonight each hall is cast in flashing red, panic and blood and alarms ringing in a deafening shutter.

An escape, he realizes as he blinks in the flutter of red, the blazing thoughts of her who could be free by now, who could be dead or in hiding or tucked safely into bed yet: _her_ who's the reason for the sirens, he knows.

He'd bet his life, but he's not offering hers up to the brig. "Order," he states like their world's fate might depend on it -- his pulse is deafeningly loud, just to him. "Efficiency. Report," he commands calmly, just.. just he could be praying as the lights still flicker, as a chorus of plated boots track down the corridor on the other side of the bay.

He doesn't think Finn. He makes a mental note of those not dressed to regulation, who hurried from the dregs of sleep to yawns and disheveled sloppiness. But he remembers he'd barely stopped to put on his kriffing trousers; she's such a stupid, insolent girl, and he was running before he put anything on over his uniform-cut undershirt.

"Three escape pods were reconfigured to depart," someone says, hasty, tactical.

" _Can someone turn the damn sirens off._ "

"No lifeforms detected --"

" -- override the warning system. Repeat: override," a woman is saying from the control panel, honest-to-heavens sipping from a cup of caf.

"Was it a malfunction?"

"Only make a suggestion when you're certain it's correct," he sighs, too loud when the ringing finally quiets, when half a dozen eyes are on him at once. "It's been four minutes and twenty-six seconds. You should _know_ \--"

"It wasn't a malfunction, General."

"The codes are protected," another says, and if they keep bringing to light the obvious.

"Find the location of Lord Ren," he orders stiffly.

"He's," this unsure, second-look pause. "He's in your quarters, General."

"And his -- the." Fucking _hell_ , he has to remind himself to breathe. "Rey. Where is she?"

"Not in her cell, not according to the scanners."

"It's her room," he scoffs. Only for the sake of congenuity, nothing more, "Well?"

But he already knows.

"Target locked," another voice says, sounding so hollow. "Fire on your signal, General."

His answer is simple. It's one word, and one word only.

\- -- - -- -

"Did you discover what you meant to?" he snarls.

All of nine minutes later, and when he pressed his hand against the keypad to unlock the door to his office, she was sitting there with a cup of tea, it was _Rey_. Rey against the entire fucking First Order.

"Reaction time? How far you could get before your pod was blown to shrapnel? How heavily guarded the escape pods are? You will answer me," he warns, and she doesn't wince when he grips her arms more forcefully than he means to. "You truly believed no one was concerned with your whereabouts when you exited your quarters in the middle of the night?"

"Did you concern yourself?" she practically spits, glancing up to him with those eyes so impossibly green and blue and brown.

If he were a worse man (if he were his father, Ren, himself seven months ago), he would slap her. "Don't you dare toy with me. Have you no sense, Rey? You're so stupid, doll; you're so stupid. They wouldn't bring you back aboard the ship. They'd kill for treason!"

"Maybe that would be better!"

"Rey! What would you have done? How many would you have killed to see your escape plans through?"

"How many have you killed?" she snaps, finally jerking herself away from him. The brush of their skin is just a lot match.

"This is a _war_."

"This isn't your war!"

"I am a commanding _general_ in this war! It's my fight as much as anyone else's!"

"Being in the military doesn't mean you hold its values, right? I would do what is necessary. Just as you --"

"Don't," he interrupts, tightening his hands into fists so he won't do anything irrational again, like pull her into his arms. "Don't. You can't justify my actions alone for redemption. I was in that room surrounded by men that hadn't shaved to regulation, women wearing bed slippers: all members of the First Order haphazardly dressed because they are people. People doing as commanded by the Supreme Leader, Rey. If this isn't my war, then it isn't there, but we know how you feel about casualties on the battlefield, the _whole_ of Starkiller Base!"

"And you!" Her voice is this loud albeit shaking quiver. He's noticed this about her voice when she's angry, when she's so crippling sad that she can barely stand. "You can't blame orders for everything when you have a conscience."

"Alright," he glowers, since two can play this game and fight to the death. When he reaches out, the cold leather of his glove so slight against her chin when he lifts her gaze up, she doesn't falter under the intensity. "What moral code were you following when you siphoned data from my files."

"Hux."

"Are you transmitting the information to Organa?"

" _Hux_."

"They would have killed you!" he erupts. "He could kill you, Rey. He's done far worse. We've all done worse, doll. You should have waited for the next export out. Hidden in a crate or something. Landed on a desolate planet in the Outer Rim, stayed out of sight and under the radar, wouldn't that have been better than this?"

"No," she murmurs.

It's now that she can't quite look at him. He snorts this laugh that's derision, frustration, his pulse still so loud, "You aren't thinking clearly."

"Stop calling me stupid," she huffs, all attitude as she clenches her jaw. "I'm _not_."

He doesn't even try to hide his eyeroll. "Don't be arrogant."

"Don't be an ass."

"You didn't bring supplies with you. Bloody hell, Rey, what would you have eaten?"

"I wasn't worried about that," she snaps.

And he doesn't soften at that -- doesn't ask her with his heart hurting how long can she go hungry. He thinks efficiency, what would reach her understanding sooner. "What about water," he dryly states.

"I wasn't leaving tonight," she lets him know, moving to not-so gracefully collapse in a chair. She's all toned limbs, her eyes so challenging.

"Of course, you weren't. Skies help you if you did. All you have is what? That confounded jacket?"

She shrugs. At least, he presumes she does. Her shoulders are hidden by excess black fabric. "Space is cold," she says simply.

Just -- just like he once justified a conscious choice to her, oh, no.

"You know I can't help you in this situation," he tells her. He feels his face burn when he recognizes the sound of his regret.

"Did I ask?"

"Rey. I mean it," he answers lowly. "You should have thought it through. I can't guarantee you won't be closely monitored after this."

"But we both know I already am," she says, gods forbid this urgency starting to take them, gravity bringing her back to standing in front of him: the last still point in the galaxy.

"Not from a prison cell."

"Just because mine is furnished --"

"Rey, you get to sleep in a bed at present, you get to eat when you're hungry, you're allowed access and travel across the ship to wherever you wish to go onboard. You have stores of water, you have a heating unit in your 'fresher, you get to speak words that aren't monitored, _why_ can't you understand?"

"That I have it so much better than what I could have?" she practically whispers. "Am I supposed to be gracious?"

He doesn't even hesitate. "Yes. _Yes_ , you are. I've told you repeatedly that you are a guest here, but you should have known planning an escape -- costing the First Order resources -- would have repercussions."

"And what would happen to the people that tried to help me leave?" she wonders.

Her wide brown eyes looking into his like fear, like stars are falling around them like shrapnel, like the blinking warning lights, it's as if she's genuinely worried for the fate of people she considers her enemies.

"They would have aided an escaped, treasonous criminal. What do you think were to happen?"

"Hux," she whispers again, only this time, _oh_ , she takes hold of his shirt in her hand, she's --

She might be close enough to kiss, if he would just let himself.

"Stop it," she says suddenly. As if she knows how weak he is or isn't.

"You're going to have me to change the documentation. Override it, aren't you?"

"I would _ask_ ," she corrects. "You're too strong-willed to be controlled. Too intelligent."

If he's imagined the softening edge of her tone, "No, I would rather act by force. Not conscious desire," he frowns, just so minutely held here. By her. Like eye contact is a bridge.

"It wouldn't matter either way," she huffs, that crease between her brows almost petulant.

"Right. So what would it be, then? A Skywalker and a Hux against the entire galaxy? Rey and Armie against the world? Don't be foolish --"

"Quit speaking to me like that."

"Stop thinking I can help you." He can barely help himself.

"Hux," she whispers again. She's right upon him, then, her mouth just a breath away from his collar; the warmth is enough to pacify him. To make the fighter in him tired, so in the end, after the long walk, there would just be her. And him. With the sweetness in which she just spoke his name.

" _Rey_."

"You already helped me. I used your codes, Hux," she says. But for just an instant, there's nothing but her lips against his throat, his skin like fire, like a star body imploding. "Do you believe I'm sorry?"


	9. Penitence

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "You don't think this is something worth dying for, you mean. You meant, and don't look at me with that hatred, I _swear_. You won't martyr yourself for this war."
> 
> "I'm sure my death for _treason_ would inspire my troops."
> 
> "It would have inspired mine," she says.

All he envisions is him with his hands held up in surrender, offense so vacant on his face that it's almost hilarious. 

_Don't shoot_ , is what he would say, so false it might actually kill him like the cut of her cheekbones. _I've been framed. Oh, no. Help. Treason._

"I didn't know they were your codes," is what _she_ says, only she's taken this deep breath for confidence first, and hell. It's his job to know when she's being dishonest; he's partially been employed to be able to understand the signs of her lack of credibility, her pathetic lies, _why_ ,

"Rey."

"I didn't!"

"Don't insult me by lying to me, Rey," he glowers, the room so quickly turned to ice. "I thought you respected me more."

("How are respect and fear any different?" she once asked, and no, _no_ , brand the irony to his bones, bury him laughing since his life has always been a joke: a sadistic comedy, him _almost_ in love with her, _Rey_.)

He's gone tactical. He's lost his efficiency. He's begun pacing, because he hasn't devoted his entire life to this cause just to be killed for treason, has he?

"Maybe," she whispers, practically gasping it in this elated breath, just _try_.

She's heard; of course, she has, and her eyes that are gray and blue and green but mostly gray tonight here under this harsh, threatening light of his study find his like this air pressure's gravity. 

"Maybe you have," she persists, reaching out to stop him as he passes by, her hand on his forearm so hesitantly. "Don't motives change in war?"

"You think you're a motive?" he practically laughs. It's really this bitter, awful thing. 

"I think goodness is. Light," she begins to say, but he silences that delusion by raising his hand up in warning. "Armitage."

"You don't deserve to address me so informally."

All she does is cross her arms, jut out one of her still too-thin hips since she's everything and stubborn, too. So fierce she doesn't think she's breakable, but oh, doll. She's so foolish. She's so, _so_ foolish to think any hero leaves a rebellion alive. 

It might take thirty years, but there's no happiness in the time of war and certainly no love in the time of the Empire.

"Armie."

"I shouldn't be surprised," he admits. 

"By what?"

Where there's anger, the nauseous kind that makes the world burn red, there's the gravelly acceptance in his tone that has made them each weaker for it. "Why shouldn't you want to see me dead, doll; why didn't I expect this?"

"Why wouldn't you die for this cause."

" _I_ ," he whispers, emphatic, "happen to have a sense of self-preservation. _I_ \--"

"You _what_?" she hisses, so low as heavy, uniform boots match loudly through the hall -- don't think it. _FN-2187_.

_The Resistance won't be intimidated by you._

"You don't think this is something worth dying for, you mean. You meant, and don't look at me with that hatred, I _swear_. You won't martyr yourself for this war."

"I'm sure my death for _treason_ would inspire my troops."

"It would have inspired mine," she says. If he wouldn't just scold her for ruining the floor, she would spit. 

He only shakes his head. Pinches the bridge of his strong nose, turns so abruptly that it's cold, how he can't even look at her now that he's begun to feel it, too. Something like relief. "You have to tell me, Rey. You have to tell me precisely what you did and why you did it."

"I don't think so."

"I can't protect you if you won't tell me. How else can I justify your actions? Do you know what he'll do?"

Like a girl who's really only ever known the safety of the sun, she laughs. "What your 'Supreme Leader' will do to me? I'm not afraid."

" _No_!" he whispers through his clenched teeth, seizing her arms hard in his hands. "Not him! Ren, Rey. Do you know what he'll do?"

"Do you know what he has done?" she throws back quietly. If it's the softness of her eyes or how she doesn't react to his iron grip on her at all, it's enough to make him guilty. Not just of the things he's done, mind, for they've all.. they've all tasted it, too. How it feels to stand on the brink of the galaxy and feel the stars bow and shine in praise and approval. Victory has made them all gods, but it's the crux of the finale of his favorite play. 

_"KILL HIM!"_ the deities beckon. So no surprise, blood like ash like shrapnel like the still body of space where an entire system of planets once revolved. 

The gods do. 

His hands have started to shake around her, so fiercely and _dying_ that he can hardly breathe when she reaches up so tenderly to touch his face. Presses her cold palms against his cheeks so tenderly it's all his existence sighing in agony at once so profound that his ribs start to bleed. There won't be any redemption where they're headed in space or in each other, _in memory of_ , "Do you know the things I've done, Rey?"

"Yes," she murmurs, and skies forbid. His eyes begin to burn. 

"Why are you still here?"

"You might be the best person on this ship."

It's affable. "If you think I'm a good person --"

"I didn't say that," she snaps, still so cutting, but.. but softer; it isn't yet the first olive branch. "I said you were the best person, and you're --"

She almost can't finish it. The lights are at once too bright, the energy in the entire room _pulsing_ with his breath against her fingertips.

"Is this the beginnings of a betrayal? Or a confession?" he asks her.

"Neither."

"Are you certain you know how this works? They kill you, doll. And since you've used me as an accessory to treason, they kill me. Or worse."

"Or worse? Hux, _you're the best person here_ ," she murmurs. With enough fragility that it's breaking, almost. Her to hear how much she means it. "You're the best person here, Hux. And you're all I have."

"Then you should have considered that prior to this. I might have helped you, Rey, had I been able to, I might have."

" _Might_ have?"

"Semantics!" he erupts, forcefully moving her arms away from him. "I might have _before_ this! Now what am I to tell Ren to appease him? I don't know what you've done. I don't know how to excuse what you've done. You might have jeopardized our location, put us in danger of an ambush. Sent information to your Resistance? _No lifeforms detected_ " he repeats with a snarl, "skies, they're all idiots, doll, but each of them seems to be more intelligent than you."

"Where are you going?"

"To report to Lord Ren," he snaps, pressing the heels of his hands to his eyes. "I'll tell him the truth of it: I don't know anything."

"You think that's the truth?"

"He'll know otherwise. It has to be."

" _Hux_ ," she whispers. Just him and her against the entire fucking First Order; it's ice again. 

How cold space is, the first he gave her his coat and told her to walk, to run, to never look back for this is the irony of life _and_ death. In moments of doubt and guilt, he reasons that he never wanted this, never, but didn't he? What had he done to just _stand_ here where great men had. To be here. Maybe with her.

"Hux."

"You'll stay in here. You won't open the doors, understood?"

"You don't command me," she insists. Even as he retrieves a blaster from a drawer in his desk, hands it to her by the barrel. "We know I don't know that."

"It would make me feel better if you took it."

"Oh, piss off," she huffs. But she does take it, and she -- she does reach for his arm, too, for something in this eye contact that broils and cinders also hurts, and.. and maybe she's never meant it. To let him down. "You're going to lie," she says next. 

It isn't like she's heard it, though, or truly knows it for certain. She's just -- a part of this as much as he is, now, so if they're dead, anyways.

"Oh, Rey," he sighs. "You are learning, aren't you?"


	10. Recompense

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Suggesting something unforgivable," Ren interprets. Only he's quieter, because perhaps he's considered it, too, fate like a step into the darkness of vast space threatening a cold nothing ahead. 
> 
> "What if the end becomes the same, is all I'm insinuating as a precaution."
> 
> "The Galaxy in chaos?"
> 
> "The Galaxy in peace," Hux says.

"Poe Dameron."

"What," Ren sighs, because be all, end all. It's still the middle of the night; this is still a slight against him. This is still accumulating evidence with the proof that neither of them know what they're doing in this: the fight they've been groomed into fighting for years -- all their lives.

They'll end just like glittering stardust, won't they? This galaxy will be a graveyard of ashes and debris. Only the Supreme Leader will be left standing, if they could just go _home_ \--

It's twenty years in the making, this droll, bored expression he takes on. He sips his tea across from Ren in his own kriffing sitting room like he's some sort of prig. "Poe Dameron. I'm sure you remember. After all, you've never been adept at making friends, and he was the first, wasn't he?"

"We were children," he grates, scowling.

"You're still a child, you insolent stiff," Hux says. "She wanted to contact him."

"I can't imagine why."

Because make it twenty-two years ago, give him back the morality he lost at the price of his own mortality, his sense and his goodness and the faith he should have kept. Him with an engine's grease smudged on his nose, wind in his hair and in Poe's curlers, a pilot's reflexes teamed with a boy with lead for trigger fingers itching to burn and a lucky penchant never to miss.

They commandeered a ship and spent the whole day playing at war like the future was this ironic, unthinkable thing. Anything to get out of their lessons, yet neither boy could summon up enough guilt to look remorseful for not telling any of their parents where they had gone.

 _Teamwork makes the dream work_ is what Poe would say, but as they slowed their walk to the face of Leia Organa glaring at them with amusement hardly recognizable from punishment impending, all Poe asked was, "Who talks first? Do you talk first?"

"Have we got our story straight?" Ben whispered back, all elbows and knees already -- the tallest, the oldest. He always went first when it came to 'fessing up and accepting punishment (this was the Ben Solo who would take responsibility for his actions and let compassion guide him as Uncle Luke would suggest), so he murmured, "I'll talk first, I got this," right before he tried to grin like his dad and talk him out of being grounded to the base, _yes_ , Kylo Ren _remembers_ Poe Dameron and the boy he would have died for 'cause that day, he only argued against justice so hard since it'd kill Poe to be chained to land instead of free to fly.

But that was before Poe Dameron swore that one day he would kill Ben Solo with his bare hands, so they really aren't children anymore, are they? And Hux claims anything can be justified.

"Have you heard her talk about him?" he presses, just.. just thinking tactical. This is a lie he can sell.

"Yes, as I braid her hair and she confesses all her secrets," Ren snarks.

"She grew to know him well in the time they spent together. She admires him and praises him greatly. She's in love with him, I think," Hux says like he might genuinely believe it, too since he _has_ to. Rebellion is an easy thing, and military is simple, so his thoughts have to be when he can feel the ghost of fingers prying into his mind, taking everything from him he doesn't yet want to relinquish.

Rey glaring like death, Rey laughing in surprise that anything he says can be funny, that anything at all can be hilarious now that it's as if the world's over, that all of her friends.

"According to the holovids," Hux continues tightly. It's paranoia only, the feeling of his collar constricting around his throat. "She was wearing his jacket when she and FN-2187 and -- and the others were infiltrating Starkiller Base. I'm sure it kept her quite warm."

"Yes," Ren says. His tone is so dark that he may as well be wearing that confounded mask. "Space is cold, isn't it?"

"Even colder, I imagine, since she's suffered months without his company."

" _This_ is the lie you tell, General?"

"You insult me by accusing me of dishonesty."

"Only dishonor," Ren practically spits, and Hux tries to not see the similarities. The fire that burns in uncontrollable flames. It will consume them all. " _I_ scarcely have any allegiance to her. Why do you?"

"I beg your pardon?"

With a quick gesture, Ren raises his hand in warning. "There isn't any proof of your claim."

"She isn't intelligent enough to lie to me," Hux tells him simply, only it.. it might hurt. Each lie tends to more and more; his back is going to break, and there will be more disparate fragments of an ashamed soul to join the rift of their world split asunder. "Besides, I ordered the escape pod be fired upon."

"We could have seized it and learned of her intentions."

Gods' sakes, he fucking knows. "She wouldn't try it again, so whatever it was, Ren," he commands, so authoritative that it's easy to remember why they hate each other. "It doesn't matter any longer."

"You think the Supreme Leader will believe you? Are you the most foolish man in the Galaxy?"

"Who's the more foolish?" Hux quietly asks like it isn't just another stab in the back -- what they've learned from each other, Ben and Armitage. Is that no one else alive can hurt the other like they can.

It just isn't snide satisfaction anymore, seeing that look like doubt across Kylo Ren's face because _one_ of them has to remain contrite enough to believe in what they're trying to achieve. One of them still has to be sure this is what's right. It doesn't even have to be for the best anymore, not for them, it just.. it has to be right.

"Have you talked to her?" Hux asks again, this time a pitch more silent and secretive.

It really isn't a surprise that Ren overreacts. "About fucking Poe Dameron? No. But I'd believe it if I didn't know better. Everyone was in love with him. Hell."

"And you were?" Hux teases, using his bored expression to symbolize a smile. "Was he a regular charming and gallant prince? Wait," he drawls, pausing only for dramatic effect.

"I won't have any qualms about killing you, I swear."

" _You_ were supposed to be the Prince, weren't you?"

Only, it's just a cruel joke. "Do you talk with her, Ren? About anything that matters?"

"Anything that matters," he repeats cynically, and he would laugh if he could let himself. Brown eyes are so similar to black, but anger just. It's still red burning this room to red. "She can't stand to look at me." And he can hardly stand to look at himself.

"She has quite a lot to say, Ren."

"I'm sure."

"About Lord Vader, Ren," he emphasizes belligerently, dragging his hands over his eyes. "About why you idolize him when the -- when what he has done. For the Rebellion, it's --"

"If the stress is becoming too much for you," he interrupts calmly, gaze piercing. "Feel free to resign."

"If this revolution sees the same end, then why," Hux persists, asking half-heartedly now since as he's begun, he can't really being himself to stop. "What will have been the point? The Emperor equates to Supreme Leader Snoke in this cheap re-enaction; you're the prodigal father returned, and I'm --"

"Suggesting something unforgivable," Ren interprets. Only he's quieter, because perhaps he's considered it, too, fate like a step into the darkness of vast space threatening a cold nothing ahead.

"What if the end becomes the same, is all I'm insinuating as a precaution."

"The Galaxy in chaos?"

"The Galaxy in peace," Hux says, and _gods_ , he hates himself for it. The mere suggestion like it isn't a line of legacy being drawn. "Isn't this what you're supposed to bring? Ben Solo," he fucking practically _laughs_ while Ren's fists start to shake -- none of this is what they meant, _why_ \-- "Solo, Organa, Kenobi, Amidala, Skywalker, _Ren_ , do you -- have you ever considered this," like just perhaps they're on the wrong side of a war not meant for them: _Hux_ , the weight of a name burns like the scars of a strap against his back, like a plague of fire making a man reborn to clinical, tactical machine,

"Hux."

All he needs to see is the shadow of wide brown eyes staring at him like this. A mouth almost gaping before teeth grit slowly.

All his nerves are shot. It isn't the most subtle moment of his life when properly, Hux addresses him as, "Lord Ren," and can't quite meet his eyes.

Against everything else, all he can slowly manage is eyes steadily going bloodshot, a heart that might know the truth but isn't brave enough to admit it yet. This is what cost Han Solo's life, and this likely will cost Poe Dameron's. "She attempted to send a transmission to him. Data, if you will, carried by the pod."

"It is a logical conclusion."

"If she tries anything like this again," Ren warns tiredly, already aware of how this must go. "I will tell Him. I'll.. refine the truth if I must."

"Ren."

"I meant it when I ordered you remain away from her, Hux."

It's such a poor lie, the way Hux shakes his head, but he has been lying to himself for years now. He's fine. The lies have gotten so easy to believe. "She's harmless, really."

"No," Ren counters, sitting up from his chair in a wave of dark fabric. "I believe she's almost as manipulative as you are."

And he leaves, and it isn't quite a subconscious thing. If killing his own father was a pull like gravity to the light and the good, then having to kill his childhood best friend, having to consider the history he purposefully eludes -- Vader overthrowing the Emperor to take to heart the teachings he had forgotten as a boy.

Hux thinks to tell Rey. He truly does.

He knows the chances are high she's still in his office, pacing as she does when she can't sleep or the rest of the ship is too loud or she's merely too into her own head to do much else but acknowledge him every so often, the smiles as he reads aloud, the heaviness with which she listens to his thoughts or weighs her own opinions and curiosities and slights there right next to his.

Sin and treason and her heart, too, flesh with his and just as breaking, he almost thinks to tell her all of it.

But he turns out the light in his room instead.

And he doesn't wonder if this is for love or rebellion, if this is for peace in the time of the Empire, or if in any instant, any parsec, oh, if this were a year and a half ago.

It would be his shot as a sniper that would take Poe Dameron's life, wouldn't it?

It doesn't make sleep easy.


End file.
